


Mangled Times

by williamsangel88



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3248624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/williamsangel88/pseuds/williamsangel88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time-travel fic, SLASH! It was like staring into a mirror yet the image that he saw didn’t line up to what he thought it should be. At least there was people kind enough to him here, but Harry had a nagging feeling that he should be anywhere but here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mangled Times

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sirius, Remus and Harry are mine to play with and I’m not giving them up anytime soon! *pouts* is it that time already?  
> Warnings: SLASH, which means boyxboy (don’t like, don’t read!), and angst. Oh there might be something in the first chapter that might freak some people out, but I don’t want to give it away yet. It was done with a purpose in mind so sorry if it upsets people. You may scream at me at a later date.

When Harry woke up it was mid-afternoon on what he guessed was a summer’s day. The sun which filtered through the high windows cast the room in a yellowy white light making him relax into his pillow. The bed was comfortable, if a little off-putting because of all the white, and he wondered if he should simply go back to sleep since no-one had yet noticed him being awake. But no, he felt wide awake and soon a restlessness which always creeped up on him when he was lying in bed for too long caused him to fidget slightly. So the teenager sat up and looked around the vaguely familiar room. It was like he had been here before but at the same time couldn’t remember when or why.

“Ah, you are awake,” a woman, obviously the nurse, said while moving towards him. Harry shrugged and tried to place her but found that he couldn’t. “Are you in any pain or discomfort?” He blinked at the question. Should he be? “You were very lucky you know. If they had found you an hour later you would have been dead for sure. Open up.” And then stuck a funny looking stick inside of his mouth.

There was something wrong with this situation. Something Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on. When he tugged at the new bandages around his arms - he just noticed them - the nurse slapped his hands away lightly. “Don’t do that. They need to stay on for at least an hour until the healing balms have all been absorbed into your skin. Now swallow these for me. There you go.”

The nurse handed him a goblet with a smoky substance which vaguely smelled of cinnamon and barely - the strong scent made him sneeze – and the nurse helped him with the strange concoction. “You are a doctor right?” Harry asked doubtfully, a little started at how raspy his voice sounded and how painful his throat was. It was almost bliss when the liquid soothed it.

Frowning the nurse tapped the stick against the goblet before giving him some water to drink. “Do you remember where you are young man?”

“Hospital?” Harry murmured hesitantly before receiving two strange looking pills he had to swallow with another dose of water. These weren’t too bad although he nearly choked on one of them.

“You are in Hogwarts Infirmary young man,” the nurse said briskly deeming him dosed enough to eat a small breakfast, or late lunch. “We would have sent you to St Mungo’s but for some strange reason we could not take you past the Wards and your injuries were far too risky to take you by Floo.”

Something nagged at his brain then. Floo? St Mungo’s? And Hogwarts too? But why should he know anything related to a hog’s warts? They couldn’t get him into some sort of transportation to get him to a hospital? That must have been it. “But what about a hog’s warts?” Harry muttered frowning as he tried to remember what he had forgotten.

The nurse gasped suddenly and lifted Harry’s head a little forcefully. The teenager startled, rapidly blinking when she insisted on shining a sharp light at his eyes. She started to mutter under her breath and an odd glow formed around them. Or was it just him. Harry tried to move away but the nurse still held his head in place. It frightened him and for a moment all he could see was a large man with a purple face standing over him threateningly. He didn’t even know he was mumbling out apologies over and over until the nurse forced another strange medicine down his throat.

Calm swept through him, his body becoming heavy as drowsiness followed. “Better now?” the nurse asked expectantly finally releasing his head. Harry swayed drunkenly and yawned, raising his hands to rub sleepily at his eyes while a feeling of absentness swept through him. Harry frowned, lowered his hand to look at it questioningly before shrugging tiredly pushing the feeling aside for now.

“Tell me, young man, what is the last thing you remember?” the nurse asked studying him intently.

Harry frowned looking at her for a second before blinking. “I remember…” the raven head scratched at his nose absentmindedly. What did he remember? “Laughing and singing.” He stared down at his hand trying to remember. “There were a lot of people. I was… no, they were talking loudly because of the music.” Harry raised his hand to lie on his chest. “I felt… happy? Yes, happy and sad. So sad…” He looked up at the nurse. “Why would I feel sad?”

“I wouldn’t know Mr…” she trailed off only just realising she had yet to know his name.

“Harry,” the raven head replied. “Harry… just Harry I guess.” He felt oddly happy about this and couldn’t help but smile a little before focussing fully on the nurse. “And you? I can’t keep calling you Madam Nurse after all.”

She chuckled softly – almost fondly, and Harry felt warmth spread inside – before straightening. “Poppy Pomfrey, matron for Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry where we are at the moment.”

Harry breathed a quiet “nice to meet you” before sinking into a stupor caused by the words of the matron. Witchcraft and wizardry? Was that a term for some sort of illness these days? But there didn’t seem to be anyone around but… wait, there was someone else here. The raven head’s eyes were stuck when they met curious, amber brown.

Poppy Pomfrey all but blinked at his distraction before giving a startled “oh, you’re awake” before excusing herself to Harry, warning him that he was not to move while she rushed to check on her other patient. With the nurse away it gave Harry the time to reassemble his thoughts – and study the other boy from a safe distance. Something inside of Harry told him that he should recognise the boy sitting on the other end of the Infirmary. It scared him that he could not remember but at the same time he felt a calm that would have unsettled him. Maybe it was because he felt safe in this place, between these white walls with the bustling matron.

Harry shifted around a little, absently noticing that he was wearing hospital pyjama’s and anything that should resemble his clothes were nowhere in sight. The other boy, with his strangely familiar eyes, was allowed to leave but questioning glances were cast Harry’s way as he walked out the grand doors. Sighing Harry wiggled his toes before pulling his leg towards his chest. The other one felt heavy and painful pins and needles travelled up and down. He gritted his teeth when the muscles contracted painfully.

“Is something hurting you?” the nurse asked upon her return.

“My leg,” Harry gritted out, lowering the other back onto the bed. The sheets moved slightly, in a strange way and the raven head stared at it with a sort of terrified fascination. His leg gave another painful throb.

The nurse frowned and lifted the blanket to uncover his leg. There was a faint scar on his foot and a set of angry teeth-marks which had become pearly white as they had scarred. They encased his ankle like something had bit into it at some point and when Harry twisted his foot the scars gleamed in the light and he guessed it must have been a dog bite of some sort. Small and menacing some of the teeth had seemingly pulled against more than just skin. The raven head frowned. It should have damaged some of the muscle but there didn’t seem to be any.

Harry glanced up to see Madam Pomfrey examining the set of teeth-marks with a curious expression. The nurse seemed almost disgusted by it. Madam Pomfrey huffed before scribbling down something on a clipboard before vanishing it like it was nothing.

“They’re not hurting me,” Harry said. “It’s my other leg.”

Madam Pomfrey looked directly at him, a shock and sadness in her eyes which made Harry uncomfortable but at least the pins and needles had subsided. “Oh dear child,” the nurse breathed before uncovering the truth to him. His left leg - the one he had been feeling the pins and needles in until a few seconds ago – was missing. Or at least half of it was. His leg ended just about where his knee should have been. It was wrapped in bandages and when Harry reached out to touch the stump he wondered at the pain he felt. He still felt it, the prickling and tingling where is foot should have been.

“It’ll take a week for the wound to fully heal,” the nurse said as she ran her stick across the bandaged stump. It started to glow startling Harry as he was still not sure what all these strange displays of power were. “I would like to keep you under observation for the whole week but we’ll have to see what the Headmaster wants to do with you.”

It sounded a bit ominous and she probably hadn’t meant it quite like that, but it still made Harry nervous. He had yet to wrap his mind around the whole Witchcraft and Wizardry thing, the fact that he no longer had a fully functioning leg and that he had no memories of which he was, where he was or how he got there. And now the fate of his very existence – okay, that sounded a bit melodramatic, but how else was he supposed to react to something like this?

“There’s no need to look so worried Harry,” the nurse said, patting his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. It didn’t really help. “Now let’s get you to the bathroom so you can freshen up and I’ll get you some more food and I’ll let the Headmaster know that you are awake.”

Of course it took a while for Harry to get to the bathroom. His balance was gone and while Madam Pomfrey was there to guide him, it still took them twice as long to get there. It was tiring and he was sweaty and a little out of breath when he finally reached it. Relieving himself and taking a scorching hot shower to get rid of the feeling of wrongness which tingled all over his body which, this time, had nothing to do with missing half his leg. When he turned the water off he encountered a problem. It was true that he had some trouble getting into the shower, but getting out proved to be a disaster in the making.

Blushing in shame Harry called out to the nurse who had probably seen more naked bodies in her life and career than Harry had. Even if he didn’t remember. Madam Pomfrey was very professional in her approach and left him alone to dry off, although she did advise him to sit down drying and dressing and to call her when he had finished.

The first time Harry looked in the mirror was when he looked up to brush his teeth. His eyes were green. They were dulled and glazed, haunted and confused. Harry could only wonder what had made them that way. His eyes strayed to the small scar on his cheekbones. It was thin and almost undetectable, not like the strange scar just above his eyebrow which was like a lightning bolt. It unnerved him, that lightning bolt scar which stood so proudly right on his forehead like it was a testament to something he had forgotten along with everything else. Something which almost felt like longing stirred in his stomach and Harry sighed in frustration. This would turn out to be troublesome.

His hair was something to be admired in a rebellious teenager kind of way. It was raven black and messy, but that wasn’t it. It was streaked with grey and - strangely – blue. And as his eyes flashed back to those mesmerising green a strange golden light appeared in them seemingly overlapping with the haunted green. It was gone in seconds and Harry wrote it off as something to do with the lighting and continued to examine his body. It was toned and thin but not so much that he could count his ribs. There was an oval shaped scar on his chest right over his heart and there were scars on either side of his arms. The right one was large, in the crook of his elbow and there seemed to be some sort of exit scarring on the other side like something large had been driven through it with a great amount of force. The other, on his left arm, was a thin line which ran from his elbow to his wrist. When he fingered it, anger boiled up inside of him and Harry gritted his teeth without knowing why.  
Apart from a strange looking burn on his shoulder and the set of teeth marks on his ankle Harry detected a number of tiny scars around his fingers and palms but they disappeared whenever he turned his hands downwards. With a sigh he glanced at his leg and gritted his teeth again, although this time in pain. There was supposed to be a foot there and a lower leg and even a knee. He could feel them; they were supposed to be there! Yet no amount of staring made them appear.  
Something hot welled up inside of him and Harry swallowed thickly. What had happened that had cost him his leg? And these scars? Why did he have those?  
Why couldn’t he just remember?

After a long time standing leaning against the sink with his eyes squeezed shut in pain and sadness - and maybe a little loneliness as well - Harry raised his head to connect his eyes with his mirrored image. What should he do now? Green eyes stared back hauntingly, looking for some type of answer that just wasn’t there to be found.

With one last sigh Harry raised himself proudly and called for Madam Pomfrey. He would face the world head on and look for the answers that his absent memories had left him. It was all he could do anyway.

The nurse helped him get dressed in simple hospital pyjama’s and tied a knot – at Harry’s request – in the loose hanging trouser leg. In the end it was a useless piece of fabric anyway. By the time Harry reached the bed he was out of breath and sweating again but less than before. Propped up in bed the nurse offered him lunch on a tray before bustling away around her domain. The lunch proved a little heavy on his stomach but Harry endured, taking small bites and sipping his tea leisurely. The juice was too sweet and the sugary sweets which were also on his tray the raven head left to the side. By the time he had finished Harry was nodding away on the bed, his tray placed at the empty space his left leg now left behind.

…

He startled awake, a loud blasting sound still ringing through the Hospital ward. Harry toppled to the side, falling off the bed and onto the unforgiving stone floor with a startled cry. The reaction of his body so ingrained that he could only stare in confusion from underneath the bed his body had rolled under. The scrapes the stunt had earned him pricked on his skin and the wounds which were still healing pulsed in protest. He gritted his teeth when his no-longer-there foot twitched and pricked.

“This is a Hospital Ward not a playground!” the annoyed voice of the resident nurse sounded from where Harry remembered the doors of the ward were. “That sort of stunts you can practice in the classroom or in your common rooms but not around here. There are patients in need of rest and unless you are a patient yourself you can’t come in here and cause a ruckus. Now go and I don’t want to see you lot here or I will report you to your Head of House.”

“Yes Madam Pomfrey,” a trio of voices chorused and the doors banged shut. Madam Pomfrey muttered as she made her rounds, checking her patients. When she reached Harry bed she blinked down, finding the raven head lying on the floor beneath his bed. “What are you doing there Mr – Harry?”

Harry looked up sheepishly. “I guess the noise startled me.”

Staring at him in confusion Madam Pomfrey helped her patient back onto the bed and handed him another smoking goblet before checking for any damage. The scrapes and bruises which had appeared because of the fall and the follow up mad scuffle to get under the bed were dressed with a sickly green paste making them vanish almost instantly. Harry watching the process in horrified fascination and to Madam Pomfrey’s horror the raven head all but snatched the glass jar from her hands to examine its contents. It smelled strongly of peppermint but there was something much heavier underneath its overbearing scent. Almost like lavender and cloves. The green paste was clear, almost see-through, and it had an oily substance making it droop back into the jar when Harry tried to get some on his fingers. When he made an attempt to cause a bruise or scrape just so he could study the healing effects of the balm the nurse snatched it back.

“You’re in the hospital to heal not to cause more damage to your body Mister,” Madam Pomfrey said in exasperation. “Any lessons in Healing will need to wait until you’re all better.”

“But I feel fine,” Harry insisted his eyes still on the jar. “And there’s nothing for me to do here. Better to keep my mind occupied than my body when it needs to heal.”

For a moment Madam Pomfrey stared at him in amusement before turning away. Harry watched her go, fidgeting and feeling a little on edge since the explosion outside the door. The nurse returned not much later with a set of books which she set on his nightstand. “I’m putting a lot of faith in you Harry that this knowledge will not be used for anything but healing after you have been tested in the arts. These spells are not meant to be used lightly and the potions mentioned not brewed without care. If I hear you trying to brew any of them or cast any of the spells without proper lessons first any detention will feel light in comparison to what I will do to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am!” Harry replied instantly, his heart hammering away while his mind burst with questions. Spells and potions and all the things she had shown him so far. Was magic real? Was that where he was? In a world filled with magic?

But admitting that he had never heard of such a world felt foolish so Harry watched the nurse return to her station without saying a word. He looked at the books she had given him. Healing Hassles: a History of Healing, Balms for the Healing: a Guide to Household Scraps and Great Expectations: Never Fear the Healer’s Wand! There was also a small and rather tattered looking book called the Tales of Beatle the Bard which Harry was quite sure hadn’t been intended but he took the book out of curiosity and started to read. If anything he was going to find out as much as he could about the new world gifted to him.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think.  
> Madam Pomfrey explained. Or the why she didn’t get a healer from St Mungo’s to help at the Hospital Wing. Now I consider it part of the story because I know people will see it as bashing. I think Madam Pomfrey, while a very competent school nurse, wouldn’t know about mass surgery. She wouldn’t have been able to safe the leg. Treating children with sniffles or back-fired curses or even helping a werewolf to heal after his monthly transformations does not make her a professional surgeon. So why didn’t she get a professional healer from St Mungo’s to assist her? She clearly had wanted to get Harry to St Mungo’s before so why not ask for assistance? Well, maybe it was a short-circuit cut in her brain. Point is that she didn’t. Does that make her a bad healer? Maybe it does, but who knows she could have been overcome by frustrations and emotions when she couldn’t get Harry through the Floo for some mysterious reason. Seeing her patient bleed to death before her eyes she would have dropped any effort to get to the hospital just to save the unknown boy no matter the cost.


End file.
